Along with the rapid growth of global e-commerce market has increased and the number of available platforms, e-commerce and content management systems. In such circumstances, to know which platform to use to create your online store can be quite a challenge, especially if you have no experience in the field of e-commerce.

There is still quite a lot of ecommerce website design solutions, but today we have to weigh all the pros and cons of only two main competitors: Magento and WooCommerce. Magento was launched in 2008 and is now owned by eBay; WooCommerce is newer – 2011 model year. At the beginning of 2016 the 387 and 242 for Magento WooCommerce was presented at the ThemeForest. In this article we will look at all the “pros” and “cons” of the use of e-commerce systems for WordPress.

Magento

The system was launched in 2008, initially received the name «Bento» by osCommerce creators who initially planned to leave things as they are, and then decided to rewrite it from scratch. Follow them a large number of companies sold 49% stake in the international eBay trading platform, which soon got absolutely everything right to Magento.

Now they offer it free of Enterprise and Community. Around formed a large ecosystem with the official site, where access to additional features and theme from the Magento Connect. The standard price is $ 99 themes and add-ons can achieve cost from $ 100 to $ 1,000!

Almost 21% of the 100 thousand advanced online stores are based on the Magento platform, which undoubtedly makes it the most popular and one of the best CMS-systems for electronic commerce, currently in use. Its biggest advantage is the large number of available plug-ins and extensions that allow you to add any new functionality, ease of finding experienced Magento developers, as well as reducing the overall cost of development and maintenance.

Magento: dignities

Magento system is designed for large stores, which are needed to maintain versatility. Magento is a more versatile system than WooCommerce, because it allows it to carry out a large number of eCommerce transactions with a large number of settings required for this. It can process thousands of products using a variety of currencies, payment systems, different languages ​​and shop windows – you have access to all the functionality to achieve this.

The main advantages:

Free option for Community Version

Scaling for large sites

A large number of available extensions.

Robust platform with a high level of functionality and customization.

Improved support for search engine optimization in comparison with most other systems.

Good customizable to fit any inquiries

Suitable for large stores

More about the advantages of the system

United center

CMS Magento allows you to create several online stores, it is possible with a single center at the same time to manage them on its basis. This is a basic CMS Magento advantage that many site owners appreciate.

Multicurrency

When you create on CMS Magento online store, you can easily use different currencies, in addition, you can easily convert them if necessary. This feature is perfect for creating an online store abroad.

Easy catalog

CMS Magento allows you to create a convenient catalog with the ability to add categories and subcategories. In addition, CMS Magento allows you to:

Create a detailed description of the goods.

For each product you can add a few photos.

Tying for each position in the category of similar products in different specifications, such as price.

Adding specific characteristics.

View stock balance.

Price management

In the online store, created in the CMS Magento can be functionally controlled prices. This feature can be a certain category of customers to offer customized prices, for example, give a discount for regular customers. In addition, you can for some time to reduce the price. You can also organize a variety of events, such as “By buying this product you will get free delivery or xxx as a gift”. All special shop offers can be collected on a single page of the site, and, to make it possible to be different in design from all other pages.

Working with Users

Visitors online store developed on CMS Magento, can add comments, rate the goods, put the tags.

Adding a meta tag «keywords» and «description» for each product and category.

Adding end in the site address for each item.

CMS creates own map XML sitemap, which is necessary for search engines.

CMS Magento Management

CMS Magento is intended for experienced administrators, as the control panel it is quite complicated and you will need to spend a lot of time to study it, or hire an experienced specialist. The main drawback of Magento – This English-language management interface. But, if you speak bad English and do not want to take the time to study it, you have the option to hire a programmer, he redesigned interface, and mounts it on the Russian. If there are no funds to pay the programmer, you can use the amateur translation, but it is quite meager and of poor quality.

CMS Magento boasts the function of drawing up all kinds of reports. With this feature, you can closely monitor the movement of goods at certain intervals of time, you can learn what visitors are most oblivious to what becomes the last page, before the guest leaves the site, etc.

The CMS Magento problems with the tax calculations. This is due to the fact that the Internet “zone free of taxes”, many owners of online stores prefer to hide their income from public services. That is why the determination of tax rates is better to cut the panel to avoid any problems, but if you want to pay taxes, you will need to adjust the rate for each country, region and product.

Magento: shortcomings

Despite the fact that the backend system has an excellent design, for those who are not familiar with this functionality will have to spend a lot of time to read the documentation a few times and smash his head on the setting of the site. Magento is clearly not suitable for beginners. The cost extensions are not happy. If you are used to a free WordPress themes and plugins for $ 19, then it will be difficult to accept the fact, to give a few hundred dollars. If you need custom functions by the programmer, then for them you have to pay a lot more than WordPress, Magento because the system is more extensive, and it is not so easy to work with.

Another point – is the cost of hosting. The system will run slowly on a standard virtual hosting (shared hosting), you’ll need a dedicated server (dedicated server) or a good set of cloud hosting.

The main disadvantages:

Requires a lot of time to study: it may be too complex for the system is too small companies.

High costs of hosting: for effective operation in high speed system requires a significant amount of memory on the server. When using smaller servers may be problems with speed and other factors.

Setting

The main problems with the CMS Magento arise during the installation process. Many owners of Internet shops are fundamentally necessary to make its own interface, but you will need to make system changes that require knowledge and time. CMS Magento – is a complex system, developed on the basis of ZendFramework. In addition, to work with dynamic content in Magento using unfamiliar Russians phototype framework, rather than the usual jQuery. In addition, CMS Magento devoid of the usual pattern of MVC.

All these subtleties do not allow owners of Internet shops to create their own unique interface, anyway, and will have to hire a programmer and coder. Moreover, the work of these professionals will manage oh how not cheap.

Of course, you can use the ready-made designs, but, it is better to pay a one time professional programmers and do “everything right”, than every day to come across unwanted rake.

Hosting

For CMS Magento needs quality hosting. Company developer reports that the hosting needs for normal operation of the site with a memory of at least 256MB. In addition, it would be best if the hosting will be close to you, at least in the same country.

Language

Do you want to take full advantage of CMS Magento, learn English, as almost all the literature and description of the technical support solutions to various problems are written in this language? Knowing the language is simple enough to cope with CMS Magento, because on the Internet there are many English language sites on the support of this system.

1C program

For the market of electronic and modern online stores it is important to be able to link the site to base 1C program. However, CMS Magento does not provide such an opportunity that can be called the main drawback of the system.

WooCommerce

WooCommerce WooThemes system was launched in 2011. It has a huge number of plugins and themes, as well as additional bonuses, as built on WordPress platform. Most plug-ins can also be used with it, which greatly expands the number of additions to the end user.

A large number of WordPress themes have built-in functionality to WooCommerce. The plugin provides almost all the features available in other CMS-systems with open source code listed in this article. WooCommerce can be more convenient and cost effective for small businesses and for those who are familiar with WordPress.

Service has a track record of success, particularly with regard to continuous optimization and modernization. In this environment, perhaps, they have no equal.

But people often ask: “What’s the catch?”. Therefore, the essence of a free app, but is free if the whole of his work? Let’s face it, what is not. But the quality requires any investments. For example, you pay for site design template and additional applications that will execute the command and control Woo commerce buy quality for the firm, and for the buyer. Overall, this is all very payback. But, for example, will have to pay, but this should not scare you for PayPal service to you too. Again, for the quality and service you have to pay. Here, you invest money, but will be raising the level of sales and customer appreciation. It is important, and what do you think?

Of course, the official site is all beautifully served as a completely free and open resource, but you do not need to connect toll tools if you do not want that. If you look at its best, the prices for additional tools are much cheaper than other resources. It turns out that the cost is very inexpensive Woo commerce as site-cloud.

WooCommerce: dignities

Advantages WooCommerce WordPress coincide with the advantages of using as the content management system. These are: the ecosystem, a large number of WooCommerce developers, a lot of free themes and plugins are very simple to install and use, constant updates, the use of low-end hosting, search engine optimization, which is necessary when using WooCommerce for online shopping.

If we talk only about WooCommerce, this system is very easy to install – you install WordPress and activate the plugin that creates a page that you need. In this system, there is a very clear section of the documentation on the site, and a huge number of extensions available, which cost about $ 49.

– Geo-location (dim-sum calculation of the tax, the calculation of the amount of delivery and regional restriction of sales);

– Management of product inventory;

– Codes and discount coupons;

– Accounts for customers;

– Optional control of a guest;

– Reviews on the product including customer support;

– Basic reporting and analytics;

– Mobile access and administration.

Woo commerce has an impressive set of features and hard to disagree with this. Among this set also has support for digital downloads, online content and subscriptions. The application is quite systematically and promptly displays all reports. You are viewing in real time the amount of goods, delivery rates, tax rates, and so on. While these features are sufficient (but not too advanced) for the small business website , the application offers advanced functionality with additional charge for confident users.

As regards web design and particularly the design pattern, then its value is from zero to one hundred dollars. Fortunately, this is a one-time purchase, but one of the most expensive instruments. The app recommends to install a free theme StoreFront, which is designed to work with all releases, supervised Woocommerce.

You also have the ability to view the complete list of free and paid add-ons Woocommerce. Among them there are those who really recommended for installation:

Like WordPress Entries, Woocommerce product page can be labeled, divided into categories and have their own attributes. After a little training and experience with WordPress, you can effortlessly administer page on WooCommerce. At the same time, it found that many Internet shops owners are not able to teach the general manager how to administer the site. Therefore, we need to develop tutorials, expanding FAQ, the online support.

On average, most people do not have problems with using Woocommerce, and administrators grasp the work program on the fly. If you are selling for a while, and turn around in e- commerce circles, then open the program you will find quite affordable. Organization of the app includes sections such as pending orders, delivery, extensive product information, and even tracking of product residue on the stock and its complete inventory. At the same time, the main reports are available for all parameters can be viewed on the instrument panel. You can also integrate applications with Google Analytics. The settings in the “Integration” tab, insert your ID Analytics.

WooCommerce: shortcomings

WooCommerce contains not so many basic functions as other parameters, so you will need to purchase at an additional cost a lot of additional extensions for functionality you need (simple PayPal is already included in the list). If you need help support, access to the correct forum also paid. If you are not accustomed to use the site to WordPress, then you have to spend time to adjust to it and to the templating system.

Cons of using WooCommerce also apply to WordPress – because of the popularity of the platform, which provokes attempts by hackers to break into the system, you will need to check for updates and install additional levels of security for your site. You will also need the following to update the code did not affect negatively the functionality of the plugin.

The main disadvantages:

Requires a lot of paid extensions

No free support

Requires constantly check for updates

Needed additional protection systems and website

Conclusion

Considering all of the above and based on the experience of users, we can say that Magento and OpenCart system work quite easily. But the study of the documentation and searching for the right extensions takes a lot of time.

As for WooCommerce, then he’s all much easier, especially if you have the right WordPress plugin ecosystem to add functionality to the site.